What's Next for the PMD?
ICNC was the chief advocate of implementing the Planned Manufacturing District in the Kinzie Industrial Corridor in 1998, and today we’re at the center of the conversation on how to ensure it continues to drive economic development here.
The City is required to review the PMD from time to time, but unlike TIFs, PMDs don’t expire. Because of the massive changes in the Fulton Market portion of the Kinzie Industrial Corridor, the continuing development pressure moving westward, and the construction of a new Green Line CTA station at Damen and Lake, this is an important time for the City to examine how the PMD can help businesses locate or stay in the Kinzie Corridor and grow here.
Over the next few months, ICNC is going to explore some of the most important issues behind the PMD in order to help business owners, policymakers, and others understand how it affects our local economy. Here’s why we’re doing that:
The City is required to review the PMD from time to time, but unlike TIFs, PMDs don’t expire. Because of the massive changes in the Fulton Market portion of the Kinzie Industrial Corridor, the continuing development pressure moving westward, and the construction of a new Green Line CTA station at Damen and Lake, this is an important time for the City to examine how the PMD can help businesses locate or stay in the Kinzie Corridor and grow here.
Over the next few months, ICNC is going to explore some of the most important issues behind the PMD in order to help business owners, policymakers, and others understand how it affects our local economy. Here’s why we’re doing that:
- Modern urban manufacturers – including brewers, food and beverage manufacturers, and companies making apparel – need production space that’s small and close to the Central Business District;
- These companies provide jobs to Chicagoans of diverse backgrounds and educational achievement;
- The PMD is the main planning tool that ensures these companies can continue to locate and grow here;
|
|
|
|
One of the most important aspects of the City’s proposed changes is that residential uses will continue to be excluded from the PMD as they are fundamentally incompatible with the kinds of activities even small industrial companies undertake. This recommitment to the PMD should help inject certainty into the local real estate market. For too long we’ve heard some property owners tell us that they wouldn’t invest in or sell their property because they hoped to sell it to a residential developer. Now these property owners won’t have to worry that they’ll miss out on a zoning change that would have dramatically changed their properties’ worth. Instead, they can make business decisions based on business fundamentals and begin to use their properties again or to sell them and lock in recent property value increases. The Kinzie Corridor boasts a healthy 93% occupancy rate, but some of the vacant land and buildings here can be attributed to the real estate speculation that the new PMD plan can put to rest.
Over the next three months we’ll explore the PMD and its companies in more detail, both here on the ICNC website and in our newsletter, and across our social media platforms. Please let us know if you have any questions or comments about this initiative by contacting either Steve DeBretto.
Over the next three months we’ll explore the PMD and its companies in more detail, both here on the ICNC website and in our newsletter, and across our social media platforms. Please let us know if you have any questions or comments about this initiative by contacting either Steve DeBretto.